A directory of Asian wetlands

The rich diversity of the flora and fauna which these ecosystems support, including numerous resident and migratory waterbirds, is of particular international significance, and the new forms of floating rice which have evolved in the wetlands of the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy, and Chao Phraya rivers are of great importance to human society. [...] INTRODUCTION In the development of an effective conservation programme for wetlands, one of the first steps is the compilation of an inventory of the most important wetland sites. [...] The 10th Meeting of the Asian Continental Section of the International Council for Bird Preservation (ICBP) in Sri Lanka in April 1984 examined the status of wetland conservation in Asia, and concluded that the identification of important sites was a priority task. [...] The Khangai Mountains occupy the centre of the country, whilst the Khentai Mountains run from the capital, Ulan Bator, to the Russian border. [...] In relation to the size of the country, the human population is very low, and as about one third of the population lives in Ulan Bator, the population density over most of the country is considerably less than one person per square kilometer.